It had been a very happy home. Unfortunately, it was also a cluttered home. Her fault. She was a terrible hoarder. The plan was that once she’d spent a few days with Olivia and Eliza in Edinburgh – after the honeymoon and Hazel’s departure, of course – she’d come back to London, spend two full days packing, then join her new wife in New York.

Perhaps she should do a bit of sorting now. A bit of looking-for-something too. The postcards. Olivia had rung her again that morning to remind her.

‘Maxie, please stop putting it off. It’s important. You need to bring them to Scotland with you.’

‘I know. I will, I promise. I think I know exactly where they are.’ She hadn’t even started looking yet.

She tried to put off her search again. She started watching the latest hit series on Netflix, but the lead actor’s bad performance annoyed her and she turned it off. She opened her laptop, glanced over her most recent writing project, then closed it again. She made herself a herbal tea. Usually that calmed her down. Not this time. She knew what she should be doing.

She went into their tiny spare room. Hazel called it The Valley of Lost and Found. It was apt. It was such a mess, a gathering place for their joint belongings when they first moved in together, and now two cupboards of combined chaos they’d never got around to sorting.

What she was looking for was at the very back of a cupboard. A box of material for the scrapbook she’d started putting together fifteen years ago, depicting her, Olivia and Jeannie’s friendship. Her plan had been to present it to Eliza on her eighteenth birthday. A surprise, for her and Jeannie. A surprise that never happened for the most terrible of reasons. She’d kept telling herself that one day she’d finish it and give it to Eliza. She never had. Instead, she’d kept moving it from house to house.

She began to leaf through the box of material now. She’d been arranging the contents chronologically, starting with photos from their first school days, aged thirteen. Their uniform truly was the ugliest garment known to woman or nun. She’d also included photos they’d taken in kiosks as teenagers, crammed into the booth, smiling faces pressed together. A photo taken at their formal school dance, when they’d deliberately worn the same colour and style of dress, the rich red standing out against the prim, pastel outfits of their classmates. Jeannie in the middle, Olivia on the left, Maxie on the right. They looked so young. Who could ever have known what lay ahead for the three of them?

She forced herself to put the photos to one side. She was here to find the postcards. Jeannie had sent dozens during her European backpacking days. Maxie had planned to include a selection in the scrapbook. She’d known she’d have to read them all first. Censor them, more accurately.